In this day 1960, Togo the former German colony that gained independence from France.
It’s been 60 years since Togo gained its independence from France.
The country, which was severely hit by the slave trade in the 16th century, was once a protectorate of Germany until the Germans were defeated by the French and British military forces after World War I in 1914.
In 1922, the western part of the country was handed to Britain while France was given the eastern area by a mandate from the League of Nations.
The country was primarily divided into the British administrative region and the French administrative region.
Togo at the time had a major problem. Its major tribe, the Ewes were divided by the boundaries of British and French Togoland.

Then emerged Sylvanus Olympio, a Lome citizen whose main concern was to unite the Ewe people.
The resident of the French area of the country was the leader of the Committee of Togolese Unity after World War II and was elected president of the first territorial assembly in 1946.
A year after, Olympio, who had Togolese and British education, began having issues with the Togoland’s French colonial administration.
With this and his wish to unite Ewes, Olympio joined the Comité de l’Unité (CUT), an association dedicated to Ewe reunification. The association also opposed closer links between Togo and the French Empire.
As president of the Togo Assembly after 1946, and later a deputy to the French Assembly, he appeared a number of times before the United Nations, stressing the need for Ewe unification.
However, his wish to unite the Ewes did not materialize when in 1956, the British Togoland voted by plebiscite to join the Gold Coast which later became independent Ghana.

In 1956 French Togo received limited autonomy. It subsequently held elections which were won by the Parti Togolaise du Progrès, and Olympio’s rival, Nicholas Grunitzky became prime minister.
But Olympio and the CUT protested the election to the United Nations till another election, this time supervised by the UN, was organized in 1958.
Olympio and his CUT won that election and he became prime minister.
Togo was granted independence on April 27, 1960. A year later, it became a republic with Olympio as its president.
Due to dissatisfaction with some of his policies and pro-French attitude, Olympio was assassinated in a coup on January 13, 1963.
Sources: face2faceafrica.com
 

One of the more fascinating ways to look at the small country of Togo is that if Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah had his way, Togo would have been part of the territory formerly known as the Gold Coast.
As Face2FaceAfrica once explained, Nkrumah had always wanted more of Togo, perhaps all of it, to be part of Ghana. This was in line with his dreams of a united Africa.

Indeed, part of what became Ghana was won over through a referendum in 1956 when the people of Western Togoland voted to be part of the British colony. Togoland was the French colony next door to the Gold Coast.
But Sylvanus Epiphanio Olympio, Togo’s first president, was an Ewe nationalist. He believed the Ewe ethnic group needed their own nation and thus, never quite overcame the pain of seeing Western Togoland join Ghana.
The Ewe nation is also a fundamentally important factor in the conception of modern Togo.
Archaeological evidence suggests that what counts as primary Ewe identity, that is language and a few other customs, was solidified prior to the 13th century.
The Ewe language itself descended from the Gbe group of languages which also includes the Fon and Aja. This family of languages is spoken largely in west African countries.
17th-century Eweland spread from modern Ghana right up to Benin. Consequently,
Ghana, Togo and Benin are the three countries on the continent that house today’s Ewe people.
European slave trade ambitions in Africa put the Ewe people in the region callously named the Slave Coast. This stretch from the Volta river in the west to bight of the Benin river.
The territory that is today Togo is thought to have been conceptualized, or better still, named around the 15th century. Togo, in the most popular Ewe dialect, comes from to (toh) meaning “river” and godo (gohdoh) which means “on the other side”.
The country thus etymologically translates as “on the other side of the river”. The said river is thought to be Lake Togo, historically a premium water source for the ancients.
Although the country is literally named by the Ewe, Togo does not even have the

 

Sources: face2faceafrica.com

 
Designed as a space to represent Slavery in a broad way, this project to build the Memorial to Tribute to Slave People aims to establish a link between past and present, inviting the public to reflect on colonial violence and its continuity in the current days. Designed as a piece of significant urban presence, the Memorial will at the same time be a place of reverence and mourning; a meeting arena; a spiritual and ritual space.

The memorial design is based on two forms: the triangle and the circle. Taken from iconographic research on religious symbols and struggle, the forms aim to celebrate the history of resistance of the enslaved people and to inspire the new struggles of communities of African descent around the world. Another important element of the Memorial is the speech, which will be translated by writing words – on the inner walls of the Memorial – gathered in rounds of conversation with African descent communities in Portugal.

Therefore, this project stands beside other initiatives that are rethinking the colonial past not only in the light of violence. For if in the tombs people were transported to work in enslavement, they were also transported philosophies, religions and experiences that were not restricted to the borders delineated by the European colonizers. News from Haiti has reached the Americas and examples of rebels have generated uprisings in several countries. In the 21st century, the anti-racist struggles and movements are still connected, with the Memorial could not be different.